Violence Doesn’t Start With the Trigger
How our everyday language quietly decides who belongs
This past weekend, I found myself watching the news unfold from both a far distance and a painfully close perspective at the same time. A shooting on a beach in Australia, violence at Brown University…stories stacking on top of one another from different countries, different contexts, different headlines, yet all carrying the same undercurrent. While these events look separate on the surface, they are connected by something deeper and more insidious; hate-fueled violence rarely erupts out of nowhere. It doesn’t begin with a weapon; it begins long before that in language, in assumptions, in the small permissions we give ourselves to reduce one another to something less than human.
I believe some of the most dangerous rhetoric in the world isn’t always loud or extreme. Sometimes it sounds polite and sometimes it sounds surprised. I’ve heard versions of it my entire adult life, especially as an openly gay woman living and working in Mississippi. People are often surprised by me, surprised that I’m warm, surprised that I’m thoughtful, surprised that I’m “normal.” As if kindness and dignity were exceptions instead of baseline human traits. “You’re actually really nice.” “You’re not what I expected.” “You’re different than the others.” On the surface, these comments sound benign, even complimentary, but underneath them is an assumption that something about my identity should have disqualified me from decency in the first place.
One moment in particular has stayed with me for years. I walked into a television station in Mississippi to do a live interview about same-sex commitment ceremonies in state buildings (circa 2013-2014 before marriage rights were nationally recognized), and when I looked to my left in the lobby, I froze. There sat a man I knew well, a Baptist pastor with a booming voice and a smile that filled the room. We were colleagues. Years earlier, we had worked together when he was a middle school principal and I was volunteering as a life coach with his students. We had seen each other at our best, but there was one thing he didn’t know about me - he didn’t know I was gay.
As soon as I realized we would be interviewed together, fear flooded my body. I had been rejected before by people who thought they knew me, only to turn cold when they learned who I loved. This wouldn’t be quiet rejection, this would be on live television. My hands shook, and my mind spiraled as I thought about the threats I’d received since returning to Mississippi in 2010. I thought about the openly gay mayor who had been murdered and the close friend beaten to death years earlier. To be openly gay in Mississippi can feel like a calculated risk, and in that moment, my body remembered all of it. And yet, I also knew something else; if I wanted to live free of fear, I couldn’t let fear make my choices for me.
So I sat down on that set, between a Baptist pastor, a host who attended his church, and the cameras, and I decided to do one thing: tell the truth without armor. When the host asked me how the situation made me feel, my voice shook as I spoke about wanting to feel equal, not “less than,” not like I had to earn my place in public life. Then something unexpected happened, the pastor spoke about how making people’s lives into political issues causes harm. He went on to say that people get lost when ideology takes over. He even said that disagreement doesn’t have to cancel love.
And then, toward the end of the interview, he said something that landed strangely in my body. He talked about me and how he knew me, that I had done good work, that he still held his beliefs, but those beliefs wouldn’t stop him from hugging me or loving me. The host chimed in and said something like, “Because Meagan is a good person and I think we can all see that now.” The lights faded, the interview ended, and people smiled, but inside, something felt off. So I have to be “good” to be accepted? I have to prove my humanity to earn love?
That moment wasn’t violent, but it lived on the same continuum. Because this is how harm begins, not with hatred, but with conditional humanity. She’s gay, but she’s nice. He’s Black, but he’s articulate. They’re Muslim, but they’re not scary. They’re undocumented, but they work hard. They went to prison, but you’d never know it. The “but” is where the danger lives. Every time we use it, we quietly reinforce the idea that someone has to overcome their identity to be worthy of respect; that kindness, intelligence, or safety are exceptions instead of expectations. When society absorbs that message long enough, it becomes easier to dehumanize those who don’t get the benefit of surprise. That’s how rhetoric hardens, that’s how fear spreads, and that’s how violence finds permission.
Recently, I had a conversation that cracked this open even further. I was on a Zoom with a new professional contact, someone introduced to me by a colleague. I knew his job title and nothing else. Early in the conversation, I asked a simple question: “How are you?” He paused, and then he started to cry. He told me he is Mexican and that he comes from an immigrant family. And right now, fear is everywhere in his community: fear of being targeted, fear of being told to leave, and the fear of being seen as disposable. When I asked him how I could support him, his answer was simple: he said, “Please go out of your way to smile at Hispanic people. Ask them how they’re doing. Make eye contact. A lot of us are walking around braced for hostility because we are experiencing it more than ever. Those small moments matter more than you know.”
I’ve been thinking about our conversation ever since. We can’t singlehandedly stop global violence, but we can interrupt the conditions that allow it to grow. We can stop being surprised when marginalized people are kind. We can stop using language that turns humanity into an exception. We can notice the “but” before it leaves our mouths. And we can practice radical, ordinary presence by smiling at the person who looks afraid, asking someone how they’re really doing and meaning it, speaking to people like they belong before they have to prove they do. Especially now, for those living with fear.
The opposite of hate isn’t debate, it’s recognition. And sometimes, the smallest human gestures are the ones that keep the world from tipping further into violence. That’s where it starts, and that’s where it can still change.
Violence doesn’t begin with the act itself; it begins much earlier, when we decide who has to earn safety, dignity, or belonging. It begins when we quietly accept that some people must be “good enough,” “polite enough,” or “palatable enough” to deserve care. Every time we interrupt that story, every time we meet someone with recognition instead of suspicion, we weaken the conditions that allow harm to spread.
Most people don’t wake up wanting to hurt others; they wake up afraid, unseen, already braced for rejection. When that fear is fed long enough by language, by systems, or by silence, it hardens into something dangerous. But fear can also soften when it’s met differently with a smile, or a question, or a moment of being seen. These moments won’t make the news, but they shape the world we’re actually living in.
We don’t get to control the violence we inherit, but we do get to choose what we pass on. We get to decide whether our words tighten fear or loosen it, whether our assumptions shrink people or make room for them. The world is watching what we normalize, and every ordinary act of recognition is a refusal to let hate have the last word.
